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> Makes zero sense: software penetration follows power laws (network effects etc) not exponential decay laws. Software libraries aren't social networks, though

by roenxi 2y ago

> Makes zero sense: software penetration follows power laws (network effects etc) not exponential decay laws. Software libraries aren't social networks, though. According to this argument we should all still be using C and not seeing new languages take hold. There is almost certainly a point where a library stops being able to add new value by being extended and that competitors can catch up to relatively easily no matter what the user demographics look like. There are definitely social aspects to software development so there might be some power laws to find; but building a competing ecosystem gets done regularly enough and works well (C# v. Java for example). Much easier to do than building a competing social network.

almostgotcaught 2y ago
> Software libraries aren't social networks, though. They literally literally are - I follow people on GH in order to check out what they're doing and what repos they're starring/using. > Much easier to do than building a competing social network. We're talking about the ecosystem around the base stack remember? So no it's not easier when the bulk of the work needs to come from OSS contributors. People have the weirdest wishful thinking about this because they don't actually work in this area (and/or don't have stake in the game). If you're this confident please show me your portfolio allocation for NVDA and AMD. Otherwise hint: everyone working on this does not so casually dismiss NVIDIA's lead.
- roenxi 2y ago
  GitHub is a social network. Libraries aren't. CUDA is not even on GitHub though as far as I recall. > We're talking about the ecosystem around the base stack remember? So no it's not easier when the bulk of the work needs to come from OSS contributors. The ecosystem exists as an abstraction around a base stack though. Much like saying the existence of Linux solidifies x86 dominance - that isn't what happens in practice, the Linux distros just pick up support for whatever hardware API are floating around. At some point the base can't add more value by adding more API features, and then the middleware starts supporting multiple bases depending on hardware economics. The OSS people have no incentive to lock themselves in to buying NVidia cards. If AMD cards tended to work for compute problems they'd probably much rather be using AMD. AMD has better support for anything OSS that isn't compute related.
  - almostgotcaught 2y ago
    I'll leave it at this: no one that works in this area agrees with you or the lowbrow/peanut gallery "NVIDIA has no moat" takes. If that doesn't give you pause then I guess you should just start a company and prove us all wrong.
    - roenxi 2y ago
      > no one that works in this area agrees with you or the lowbrow/peanut gallery "NVIDIA has no moat" takes. Can you source that? That seems like a hard claim to source. Everyone in the area agrees that they'd rather be using Nvidia hardware. I'd rather be using Nvidia hardware, indeed I switched to a Nvidia card. But that is not because I see Nvidia as having a long term defensible position, but because AMD's compute drivers on consumer cards appear to suck. It was implementation details and AMD's weaknesses, not Nvidia's strengths. Important details, but nothing that can be realistically called a moat and certainly not anything to do with CUDA itself. The issues were far more foundational. Honestly it'd be interesting to have some real expert takes on what the problem with AMD is, because the major one I'm aware of was geohotz's and he didn't get much further than I did. Blockers came up much deeper in the stack than CUDA. ROCm would have been good enough except that it was running on AMD kernel drivers.

by roenxi 2y ago

almostgotcaught 2y ago

> Software libraries aren't social networks, though. They literally literally are - I follow people on GH in order to check out what they're doing and what repos they're starring/using. > Much easier to do than building a competing social network. We're talking about the ecosystem around the base stack remember? So no it's not easier when the bulk of the work needs to come from OSS contributors. People have the weirdest wishful thinking about this because they don't actually work in this area (and/or don't have stake in the game). If you're this confident please show me your portfolio allocation for NVDA and AMD. Otherwise hint: everyone working on this does not so casually dismiss NVIDIA's lead.

roenxi 2y ago
GitHub is a social network. Libraries aren't. CUDA is not even on GitHub though as far as I recall. > We're talking about the ecosystem around the base stack remember? So no it's not easier when the bulk of the work needs to come from OSS contributors. The ecosystem exists as an abstraction around a base stack though. Much like saying the existence of Linux solidifies x86 dominance - that isn't what happens in practice, the Linux distros just pick up support for whatever hardware API are floating around. At some point the base can't add more value by adding more API features, and then the middleware starts supporting multiple bases depending on hardware economics. The OSS people have no incentive to lock themselves in to buying NVidia cards. If AMD cards tended to work for compute problems they'd probably much rather be using AMD. AMD has better support for anything OSS that isn't compute related.
- almostgotcaught 2y ago
  I'll leave it at this: no one that works in this area agrees with you or the lowbrow/peanut gallery "NVIDIA has no moat" takes. If that doesn't give you pause then I guess you should just start a company and prove us all wrong.
  - roenxi 2y ago
    > no one that works in this area agrees with you or the lowbrow/peanut gallery "NVIDIA has no moat" takes. Can you source that? That seems like a hard claim to source. Everyone in the area agrees that they'd rather be using Nvidia hardware. I'd rather be using Nvidia hardware, indeed I switched to a Nvidia card. But that is not because I see Nvidia as having a long term defensible position, but because AMD's compute drivers on consumer cards appear to suck. It was implementation details and AMD's weaknesses, not Nvidia's strengths. Important details, but nothing that can be realistically called a moat and certainly not anything to do with CUDA itself. The issues were far more foundational. Honestly it'd be interesting to have some real expert takes on what the problem with AMD is, because the major one I'm aware of was geohotz's and he didn't get much further than I did. Blockers came up much deeper in the stack than CUDA. ROCm would have been good enough except that it was running on AMD kernel drivers.